I second that "emotion", Starcom. There are enough "playable" games out there, including (in my case) many boxed games still on my shelves that I'd like to replay, two of my favorites being S1 and S2, which I recently DID play again (with your help). I just started to play "Vampyre Story" again, and it's working perfectly on my WIN 10 PC (in spite of what I read in the "Windows 10 and Games" posting. Sandy

I understand your disappointment with the controls in the new Syberia game, which we all expected so much from. For an oldtimer like myself that is, however, not the major concern. Keyboard controls is not new for those of us, who actually played games like Maniac Mansion way back in the past. I would certainly prefer a mouse driven adventure game today, but you can very well play it with a keyboard only, if you are not rushed to do things.

So, my question to GreyFuss and other players is, do you have to do any keyboard dexterity, like mini games, fast action etc. ?

Read the reviews on Steam. THey all say the the same thing over and over. It isn't the fact you need to use the keyboard or controller, it's the fact that it's still not controllable. If people used to controllers are having a hard time, I sure will be!

That's a good point about the camera angle and first or third person, Greyfuss... Although I'm sure I've played third person games where the mouse controlled camera angle - just can't think of any right now.

_________________________
In my PC corner for the winter, gaming, knitting and reading.

I'm so disappointed! Syberia is one of my all-time fave games and I've been looking forward to the new one, but, between the controls and the specs, I doubt I will be able to play it. I guess I will just watch a play-through of the game on YouTube so I can at least see what happens in the game. It's getting so much harder to find good point and click adventure games anymore.......guess most people like the violence and killing games, otherwise there wouldn't be so many of those now. I have nothing against those types of games, I just don't enjoy them. I play games to relax and explore and take my time wandering around. Maybe I'm just becoming a "dinosaur"......lol.

_________________________
Following the Yellow Brick Road in search of the White Rabbit so I can fly away to Neverland

Over 9 hours in and I am enjoying the story and so far did come across a nice puzzle type conundrum. So much of this game reminds and looks like the originals, sure would have been perfect if one could simply double click where you wanted to go on the screen and Kate would run there. In the portion of the game I am in now there has been a lot of walking around and my fingers on my left hand go asleep on me holding and using two keys at a time. I have discovered that the two biggest annoyances I have with the controls Is the sudden change in the camera view and the fact that Kate always takes a couple steps after you let go of a key. These two annoyances were quite evident in one part where I had Kate go up some stairs using the 'W' key (up) with the camera view from behind her and immediately when she reached the top of the stairs the camera view switched to in front of her where the 'W' key (up) now made her turn and walk down the stairs.. I laughed out loud as this happened several times and I couldn't get her to stay at the top of the stairs because she wouldn't stop as soon as I let go of the key. I eventually had to time it by letting go of the 'W' key before she reached the top as she then took two steps more on her own which now gave me time to switch to the 'S' Key (down) to continue to walk down the same street. Other than the controls I am enjoying the ride.

_________________________
"Don't Hate Me Because I Am Beautiful...There Are Many Other Reasons!"

I am suddenly ambivalent. Like most of you, I've been anxious to get and play this game because I loved the other two. I went to Steam tonight intending to buy it, but I read all (Well...several) of the reviews posted and some are pretty scathing. None are unconditionally positive. Now I'm not at all sure if I wish to play it. You who have it please keep commenting. Many of us will be checking your comments.

_________________________
If all the people were heroes, there would be no one to watch the parades.

Wow, and to think I ordered the game from Amazon and should get it in the next few days.

I was planning on using the latest Syberia game to help me break away from, let's just say, other type games that have become my main course of playing. I still think I will stop with those particular games as I have some adventure games backed up that I haven't played yet.

In any event, I do happen to have a few controllers and will see which one works the best with Syberia 3.

If I think I can provide any pertinent input after playing the game I will post.

Good luck to all and let's hope Microids makes changes to make the game more enjoyable.

Robert

_________________________
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

Supposedly they are working on a patch to make the controls better for both PC and controllers.

I'm dubious about how much they can do to improve the keyboard controls. Going by what GreyFuss posted earlier, the game is using camera-relative control, and camera-relative control isn't easily changeable to character-relative control.

Originally Posted By: GreyFuss

I have discovered that the two biggest annoyances I have with the controls is the sudden change in the camera view and the fact that Kate always takes a couple steps after you let go of a key. These two annoyances were quite evident in one part where I had Kate go up some stairs using the 'W' key (up) with the camera view from behind her and immediately when she reached the top of the stairs the camera view switched to in front of her where the 'W' key (up) now made her turn and walk down the stairs.

If the game had been using character-relative control, Kate would have kept moving forward up the stairs and proceeding forward, no matter which way the camera flipped around. She would not have turned around and gone back downstairs. In order to move her to the right side of the screen, you'd have to tap the D key (or right arrow key) until she turned and use the W key (or up arrow) to move. Alternatively many PC games allow you to steer with the mouse and use the A and D keys for strafing. Character-relative controls also often allow mapping the W key to a mouse button. Character-relative controls are better for keyboard and keyboard/mouse control.

Follow-cam (aka over-the-shoulder) may be considered a type of 3rd person because you see your character on the screen, but actually has more in common with 1st person. With follow-cam, you're always behind your character and controls are always character-relative, just as with 1st person. In contrast, in the more common "3rd person" view in adventure games, you might be viewing your character from the front, the side, the back, at an angle, etc., but mostly you're not behind him. Not many adventure games use follow-cam, but Uru and Talos Principle had it as an option and Dreamfall used it (though Dreamfall had an issue with the turning axis being in the wrong place, making it more confusing to control with keyboard than the countless keyboard-controlled RPG's and action games that "Darkside" gamers may have played).

With camera-relative control, the direction your character is moving changes when the camera flips around, and you can end up in a loop going back and forth through a door or going up and down stairs. The D key always means go to the right side of the screen. So if the camera flips and the right side of the screen changes 180 degrees from what it was before, you'll be going back and forth forever. Similarly the A key always means go to the left side of the screen, the W key means go toward the back of the screen, and the S key means go toward the front of the screen, and a 180 degree screen flip will send you back and forth forever.

Camera-relative control works fairly well with a gamepad because you're pushing a thumbstick in the direction you want the character to move. This is not so easy with keyboard keys.

In contrast, Character-relative control doesn't work so well with a gamepad because of the difficulty of getting the character to run in a straight line. Unless you are VERY good with the gamepad thumbstick, the character ends up running in arcs, veering slightly left or right because of the difficulty of pushing the thumbstick exactly upward.

The first adventure game I played with camera-relative control was Broken Sword 3 (BS3), and I had a terrible time controlling it, mostly because I was used to character-relative keyboard controls (the norm for keyboard-controlled and keyboard/mouse-controlled PC games back then) and my reflexes were all wrong for camera-relative. However one thing the developer (Revolution) did was to prevent the character from suddenly changing direction when the camera flipped around. For as long as you continued to hold the key down, he'd continue running in the same direction as before the camera flipped. This still wasn't ideal for people with shaky hands, but at least Revolution recognized there was a problem and as long as your hands were steady you wouldn't suddenly reverse direction or run off at some weird angle when the camera flipped.

Grim Fandango used character-relative control. It was still a bit confusing because it wasn't follow-cam, and when Manny was facing you, his right would be your left, etc. But it wasn't that hard for me to keep track of. Nowhere near as hard for me as BS3. People may have problems with keyboard control in both Grim Fandango and Syberia 3, but the two control schemes are definitely not the same.

Many years ago, around the time BS3 was released, I remember some guy posting to the adventure newsgroup to complain about the camera-relative keyboard controls in BS3. He said he had to relearn all his keyboard reflexes in order to play it, and then after he finished BS3, he had to unlearn his BS3 reflexes and relearn his normal keyboard reflexes all over again in order to play all his other games. Apparently all his other games used character-relative control.

I'm a few hours into the game and enjoy it so far. The really good thing is the way Sokal's Syberia universe comes to life in 3D and the story is promising. I'm hooked and will definitely see this one til the end. The rest is not very good though. Bad controls (and i'm using a controller), a very limited camera, some sound issues with missing lines of dialogue (compared with the subtitles), a mediocre, albeit functional, technical quality of the graphics, a "casual feel" to some scenes where you get a static close-up view of half a room and you object is to rummage around to find the odd object, a couple of contrived and silly puzzles so far and one instance of the game freezing completely. The auto-save took me right back to the point where it froze though.

Simply a rather unpolished game with production values that are not on the triple A level that the price would suggest. But again, I really enjoy it.:)